Footprints
by LightsPast
Summary: Written for The Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition round 1- Her voice was glacial, her features blank. No onlooker could have guessed at the friendship they once shared.


**Written for the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition, Round One**

**Team: Montrose Magpies**

**Position: Chaser 3**

**Pairing: Severus and Lily**

**Relationship: Enemies**

**Prompts: Leaving, Purple, "Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia." – John Green, Looking for Alaska**

**Words: 1,141**

* * *

It was days such as these when he remembered. A chill in the air, frost sparkled and clouds of breath puffed from mouths._ Just like back then._

In his hand, a piece of parchment crumpled. Purple inked letters scrawled across it erratically, slowly disappearing from view as the paper was compressed.

Students ran across the snowy grounds, shrieking and throwing balls of white at each other. Laughter rang across the open area.

He stood in the archway, watching. He would not participate, it would be very un-Slytherin, and besides he would never be welcome among_ them. _He had no desire to be taunted, tripped, mocked. Not today.

He sneered as James Potter and his band of miscreant Gryffindors charged across his vision. He hated them with a passion, always had, but this year was worse.

This year Potter had surpassed all previous offences. He had done the unthinkable. He had stolen her. His Lily.

She had been his everything. Her smile, her thick red hair, her bright laugh. Her companionship.

Her quiet beauty had blossomed like the flower of her namesake and he had stood by her side. But their friendship had begun to change with their arrival at Hogwarts. They grew further apart, as they were destined to the moment they were sorted into the houses whose rivalry burned fierce.

They had walked to the cross road together but while he was contemplating the left fork, she had run to the right before he had noticed, leaving him far behind.

He had tried to follow. Oh, he had tried, but in the end he had lost her in a fit of rage, a single uncensored moment and he had found himself stumbling back onto the left path after all.

And now he stood alone.

He watched her run across a slippery patch of ice with her friend, shrieking and giggling. Her red hair was like a splash of blood on the canvas of snow. She wore a purple coat.

_Just like back then._

_They had been ten and it was the first day of snow that year. __"Come on, Sev! Come out and play!"__ She had waited at his front gate. Her red hair was bundled under a hat; her puffy purple coat looked warm. He felt awkward in his inadequate second-hand clothing._

Lily and her friend clutched each other with helpless laughter as they skidded to and fro.

_"Let's go to the river, Sev!"__ Lily had yelled excitedly when he exited the house. She had grabbed his arm and towed him along. _

Potter's right hand man, Black, called out "Careful there, Evans!" He roared with laughter watching the two girls make their precarious way across.

_They had run through the streets, jumping in small snow drifts and laughing madly at nothing. _

James did not join in with his friend's laughter, but instead smiled fondly at Lily, his hand instinctively jumping to his hair.

_At the river, Lily had run across the small bridge and leant down to look at the frozen water. "I wonder if the fish are all frozen?" she laughed._

As she reached the end of the ice she looked up and returned Potter's gaze.

_They had run through the trees and when they got to their place, a small thicket of trees, they sat on a fallen tree, not willing to brave the snow._

Potter approached Lily.

"_Tell me more about Hogwarts, Sev." Lily's eyes were wide and bright, emerald stained-glass windows to her soul._

The boy swept the girl up into his arms.

"_Well," Severus began, "Mother says there's a poltergeist called Peeves who like to play tricks on the students . . ."_

The black haired boy pulled the red haired girl into a passionate kiss.

In the archway, Severus's hand clenched into a helpless fist and the letter crumpled beyond repair.

"_Lily! Lily!" Petunia's sullen voice rung through the trees. _

The couple broke apart, smiling at each other like there was nothing else.

_Lily jumped to her feet._ _"I've got to go, Tuney's looking for me." _

Lily said something to Potter and turned away, smiling, and began walking in his direction. He was unsure whether or not she had seen him.

_Severus nodded disappointedly. _

His suspicions were confirmed when she walked through the archway and froze abruptly. "Snape." Her voice was glacial, her features blank. No onlooker could have guessed at the friendship they once shared. She backed away unconsciously, and it killed him, just a little.

_Perhaps noticing the upset on his face, Lily grabbed his hand and said, "Let's stay friends forever, Sev!"_

"Lily," he began but she cut him off. "We are not on a first name basis anymore. I have nothing to say to you." She began to turn away, but he reached out for her hand. She shied from his touch. "I'm sorry Lily! I-"

She stopped him. "You think you can just apologize and everything will be alright between us, but you're wrong." She trembled with an emotion that he took to be fury. "I don't know why we were ever even friends. Leave me alone."

"Li-"

Her voice was low. "I told you, we're not friends anymore. We're enemies." Her words cut into his warped, desperate heart like nothing else she had said and this time when she turned, he let her go.

_Then she ran off through the snow. _

She walked away from him, posture straight and deliberate. She was leaving, her purple coat gliding across the snow, red hair tossed back.

_At the edge of the thicket, she glanced back at him and grinned, then vanished in a flick of purple._

She did not look back.

Inside him, he felt something wither. The vine of hope, the last thing holding him up, it broke and he spiralled downwards into the void, the shadows he had resisted.

His eyes darkened as if they had always been that way. "If it is an enemy you want, Lily," he murmured, "It is an enemy you shall get." Face cold, he turned away, longing for the summer he could join the Dark Lord. To the ground he threw the creased letter he had held, informing him of the death of his mother at the hands of his muggle father.

"Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia, indeed. I imagined a future with you. But not all dreams come true.

"You have chosen your path, and now I choose mine. Perhaps we will see each other on the other side, but now that we are adversaries we will never fight alongside one another. Not in this life." Every step rang with his new conviction.

On the ground, the snow's water seeped through the parchment and the ink ran, staining the letter vivid violet.

Lily's footsteps led away into the snow, further and further from his spurned, empty heart.


End file.
